Certainly. Thank you.
I first would like to echo Professor Doran's thanks to the committee for having us back.
I want to just say a couple of things, some of which you already know, but I think it's important to add to the record. There's been a lot of stir among U.S. allies following President Obama's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic Monthly, where the president complained about free-rider allies, who weren't pulling their weight. I think it's important to clear the air.
There's certainly no one in Washington who considers Canada a free rider. In fact, Canada is a great contributor around the world to fights that the Americans take quite seriously, whether it's Afghanistan or the fight against the Islamic State. Nonetheless, as one of our other witnesses this morning, Joel Sokolsky, has said, Canada usually can manage to be an easy rider, that is to say a country that doesn't put an undue burden on American resources but is a net contributor. Getting that right I think is the most important thing to come out of your current defence review: to make sure that you have the capabilities to contribute, in a way that doesn't mean you don't rely on the United States' support in key areas, but it means that you're not putting a burden on those resources that are most in demand in the security environment in which we now fit.
There are three ways I think we can focus our efforts together. One is to increase our domain awareness in the United States, Canada, North America generally, to know better what's going on, where we're vulnerable. This includes everything from satellite surveillance, drone surveillance, and good intelligence on the ground with law enforcement as well as our traditional intelligence agencies. There's a lot that we need to do to make sure that we know where the threat lies and we're prepared to respond.
The second thing I think we need to prioritize is making sure that the resources and assets that we do have today are working well together. NORAD is an excellent example of the way in which U.S. and Canadian assets in air defence can work together, coordinated, to provide the best coverage possible. On the Navy and Coast Guard side, we need to make sure that we're as good, if not better. And I think, increasingly, as we respond to the potential not only for natural disasters, but also for—we hope not—a terrorist incident in North America itself we need to make sure that our national guard, militia, and military operations on the ground are able to better coordinate. This is something that the governments have been working on, in terms of disaster relief, in the past, but we need to make sure there's good coordination there.
I will say that what I'm talking about on the second point is really going to war with the assets we have. We do have very good military and law enforcement capabilities, but as we look forward, my third point is we need to improve procurement. This is something that both the United States and Canada can learn from each other on. The United States suffers sometimes from having so much money to invest in defence capabilities that we're not always as prudent as we could be. Systems come in very expensive, but maybe not offering the bang for the buck that we would like them to. Similarly, Canada struggled, as you know, with procurement in the past, whether it's the Sea King maritime helicopter replacement or, as we now are debating, the future of the F-35. I think getting procurement right is going to be crucial as we move forward.
That leads me to my last point. I think it's going to be very difficult for you, as a committee—and I have great sympathy for all of you in your deliberations—in trying to plan now without knowing the outcome of the next U.S. election. This is an interesting election here, as you know, and one in which national security and foreign policy have not played a particularly prominent role on either the Democratic or the Republican side. The most predictable candidate who we have may be Hillary Clinton, on the Democratic side, but we also know that it's likely that we have 15 years or so of her emails that may be compromised to Russian and Chinese intelligence, making it a very awkward situation for her, as president. For the rest of the leaders we have a very wide, varied, and in the case of Donald Trump, unpredictable, foreign policy stance. Yet the United States is embarking on, as it usually does, an important recapitalization of its military. This is going to make it very hard for Canada to plan without knowing where the U.S. is going. I think it means in the next year contingency planning has to be part of what you're thinking, and I think you won't want to finalize plans for Canada's defence fully until you know where the United States is going. I wish I could offer you a better prediction of how that's going to work out, but I think it's a very important factor. The Canadian defence review absolutely can't be rushed because you'll need that information from the United States before you're really sure where you need to go.
Thank you very much.